© 2014 irmgard parth

Irmgard Parth was born in Tirol, Austria. In 1967 she moved to England; she studied at Hammersmith College of Art from 1970 to 1974 and at Chelsea School of Art from 1974 to 1975. During her studies with Peter Baer and Birgit Sciold she became fascinated  by colour woodcut and this became her principal vehicle of expression. Her main source of inspiration is landscape, and for her interpretations she uses a method derived from a combination of Western and Japanese procedures.

Irmgard Parth`s works have been exhibited in Austria, England, Switzerland, Germany and America. She has participated in mixed  shows such as the Royal Academy SummerExhibition and the Society of Wood Engravers. Between 1975 and 1980 she produced editions of prints for Ernst Hilger, Vienna, who showed her work at international art fairs in Basel, Duesseldorf and Washington.

Her prints are held in the collection of the city of Vienna, in the Albertina, the Turmmuseum Oetz, the Land Tirol and in private collections around the world.

She was invited to exhibit a cycle of prints inspired by the story of the “Creation” as told in Genesis and was later commissioned to produce a series of prints on the theme of “The Passion” for the Museum Gallery in Oetz, Tirol. Both cycles were also shown at Clare College, Cambridge.
Her latest exhibition took place in Spring 2013 at the “Galerie Notburga” in Innsbruck.

Artist's Statement – August 2013

Virtually all of my work is based on my emotional response to landscape: usually, but not exclusively, the shapes of the mountains in my native Tirol.

For the woodcuts I make sketchbook drawings which have just enough information to stimulate my memory. My work does not reflect on anecdotal particulars. The prints develop through a process that has been described as “poetic recollection”. My emotional response is tempered by the rigours of making a colour woodcut: considering the shapes, harmonising the colour and making use of the grain of the wood to suggest texture. These factors lead to a pairing down, a simplification of the image which can verge on the abstract but has a firm foundation in fact.